


Speaking Terms

by _Lightning_ (Lightning070)



Series: Cause and Aftermath [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Civil War Fix-It, Conflict Resolution, Gen, Guilt, Male Friendship, Minor Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, NO STONY, No Team Cap, No Team Iron Man, Olive Branch, POV Steve Rogers, Pain, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Roger's Shield, Sad Tony Stark, Siberia, Steve Rogers Is a Good Bro, Tony Stark Has Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Tony Stark has a plan, Tony and Steve talk, post-Battle of Wakanda, sad Steve Rogers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-29
Updated: 2018-08-29
Packaged: 2019-07-04 06:28:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15835656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lightning070/pseuds/_Lightning_
Summary: "Cap and I fell out hard. We're not on speaking terms." [Tony Stark - Avengers: Infinity War]Tony Stark and Steve Rogers finally meet in the aftermath of the Battle of Wakanda.





	Speaking Terms

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Speaking Terms](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/411918) by _Lightning_. 



> Any comment/review, no matter how short, will be most welcome! :)
> 
> Here's the companion piece, a sort of prequel, but they can be read in any order: "Interference"-> https://archiveofourown.org/works/15953963

 

 _"What have I become_  
_My sweetest friend?_  
_Everyone I know_  
_Goes away in the end"_  
  
[Hurt – Johnny Cash]

 

 

 _"Weep not for roads untraveled_  
_Weep not for sights unseen_  
_May your love never end_  
_And if you need a friend_  
_There's a seat here alongside me"_

[Roads Untraveled – Linkin Park]

 

 

At first sight, it just looks like a regular New York apartment, if not for the herd of zebras scattered around the yellowy savannah, which stretches as far as the eye can see beyond the wide glass wall. He'll never get used to that view, Steve reckons. He stops on the common room's doorway not daring to cross it, his shoulders hunched.

He sees him sitting at the glass table. He's still wearing a sober black suit as well, with the tie loosened; his sunglasses rest beside him, reflected on the polished surface. He's sitting with his side to the door, but his head is turned to the glass wall, maybe intrigued by the landscape, maybe just lost in his thoughts.

From the threshold, Steve lays his knuckles on the door frame.

He wavers, although this is the common room and Shuri has guaranteed that it's at the complete disposal of all of them – of who's left. He wavers, thinking about how he hasn't seen him during the funeral for T'Challa and the fallen, if not briefly in the sidelines, which he then stepped away from as soon as he could. He wavers, because two years have gone by, and he never received a call from him.

He knocks three times on the wood, lightly.

Tony quickly turns his head. He gives away a subtle move of surprise, not so marked one could say he didn't expect to see him there. He's lost weight, Steve notices at first glance. He looks older, he figures studying his face, crossed by more wrinkles than he remembered, and at the goatee streaked by some grey hair. Under the shirt peeps out the bright bluish shape of what looks like a new arc reactor.

He reckons Tony's checking out his changes as well, from his overgrown hair to his almost unkept beard, to the noticeable contusions on his face. He keeps quiet, even though he knows he should be the one to talk first. How do you greet the man who attacked you and tried to kill your best friend two years ago? How do you greet the man who lied to you and shattered your chest two years ago?

"Captain," Tony finally utters, echoing their first meeting in Stuttgart, when they still believed they could defeat gods.

His irony is for him as unreadable as usual. He doesn't correct him about his title, he doesn't resent it, he lets it go.

"Tony," he simply replies with a slight nod, dropping out any formality.

Tony turns completely as he holds his wounded side, with no attempt at concealing that movement as one would expect from him. He stares at him straight-faced, clearly strained by a fight about which Steve has only received confused and inconsistent reports.

"You plan on standing there the whole time just for the sake of annoying me?" he finally pressed him in his usual, nonchalant tone.

Steve doesn't reply, but he steps in and approaches him, halting two measured feet away from the table. He crosses his arms on his chest and suddenly it's Leipzig all over again in reversed roles, with a similar table between them, a refused olive branch and harsh words dividing them.

"I wish I could say I didn't expect to see you here," Tony starts off.

He makes a calculated pause, just staring at him as he indolently leans back in his chair, rubbing at a scratch on his temple with an irritated grimace.

"I've always been rather predictable," Steve admits, in an appeasing way.

"I beg to differ," he bluntly bickers, pressing his lips in a hard line.

Siberia's icy wind creeps between them, seeping through unhealed cracks.

"Who's gone, apart from Cat's Eye and Jarvis 2.0?" Tony gets off the point, facing the most urgent issues head-on, just setting back an argument they both know to be inevitable.

Steve realizes now that he didn't attend the ceremony long enough to hear the full, endless list of Wakanda's fallen. He considers reprimanding him or asking him where he's been instead of taking part in the funerals. He chooses his third option, the most neutral yet painful one:

"Wanda and Sam," he begins flatly "Fury and Maria Hill too. Clint and Scott are MIA," he finishes, feeling the ashen weight on his shoulders getting heavier with every name. "Thor said that Loki's dead as well," he adds significantly, eyeing his reaction.

Tony winces, frowns and refrains from any comment, but it's clear his thoughts are lost in New York. He just keeps staring at him persistently, like he's waiting for the list to go on. Steve keeps quiet, as the image of Bucky calling his name and fading to ashes right before him crosses his head. He keeps quiet and he's unable to tell if it's to protect himself or Tony or Bucky, just like he was unable to tell two years ago.

"I've heard you weren't alone on Titan. Who did we lose there?" he asks after a brief while, following the man's pragmatic lead.

"Potential allies, I suppose," he shrugs, too stiffly for it to pass as a casual gesture "Star... Killer?" he frowns in doubt "A metaphor-impaired wrestler, a telepathic bug-girl, a smartass Sorcerer's Apprentice..." he suddenly comes short of nicknames "... and Parker," he dryly concludes, averting his eyes.

Steve wonders if that name should sound familiar to him as it seems to be for Tony.

"Who?"

"The spider-boy who'd almost lay you out in Leipzig," he states with a clear hint of satisfaction, crippled by the bitter crease in his lips.

The faint image of a red and blue suit surfaces in Steve's memory; he's seen it several times on TV too.

"The kid from Queens," he deduces, frowning at the thought of how young that opponent had seemed.

"Yes," the other bluntly confirms.

"I wasn't aware he was officially one of ours."

He lets that remark slip out in neutral curiosity, but Tony looks like he's just been stabbed. He sets his jaw and presses the wound on his stomach; the other hand grips his shoulder in an absent gesture. For a moment, he seems on the point of vanishing like everyone else.

"He became one that day."

Steve notices how much effort he's putting into his voice to keep it from wavering. He's not seen him in two years, but in his gaze, he recognizes the same sorrowful shade he'd shown in Siberia after he'd been slammed on the frozen concrete. It circles his widened pupils, clouding his once bright and playful eyes. His next words are dull, strained, almost a retaliation for having touched an open wound:

"Where's Barnes?"

Steve would laugh if he didn't feel torn apart from the inside. Tony had guessed his omission right from the start. He'd forgotten how annoyingly clever he could be. He makes to answer and has a slight, barely noticeable hesitation he'd want to repress completely.

"Gone," he utters brokenly, and bends his chin on his chest unable to add more.

Tony silently processes that information. He nods slightly, probably managing the biggest gesture of condolences Steve can expect from him, but his brows furrow. There's no satisfaction in the way he's looking at him, nor he seems relieved to know his parents' physical murderer is dead.

"You all right?"

Once again, the echo of a past conversation steps in, but it soon fades away: the answer to that question can't be the same as that one time. His home is gone. He doesn't reply and seals his mouth. Tony doesn't insist and just lowers his gaze.

Steve realizes there's just one more question he has to ask, before leaving the present to enter the past. He opens his mouth, but he holds back. He's afraid to ask. Maybe he can already read the answer in the deep, dark circles around Tony's eyes, or in the fact that it's been 48 hours and he's still in Wakanda, alone. He's afraid to ask, but he does nonetheless:

"And Pepper?"

He can see his eyes fading out and going still; he stiffens like he had his armor back on.

"I don't know."

It's an unfitting admission for a quick-witted genius with a solution always at hand. He has every means to dispel that doubt, but he seems to cling onto it to avoid a certainty. Steve reckons the reasons why he'd lied to him two years ago might not have been all that wrong.

And despite all that, he wishes he could cling to a doubt as well. But the last piece of his world, the world that's been dead for 70 years, shattered before him with the unquestionable sharpness of a film. Now his world keeps living only in a drawing block.

"I'm so sorry, Tony."

He utters those same words, like two years ago. Tony might realize that, but he looks too tired to care. He feels tired too, so internally that he can't fathom to rest. He reckons Tony hasn't had a wink of sleep in two days as well.

The cry of billions of people keeps them awake.

"All formalities aside..." Tony snaps out of it and fumbles for something in his suit's pocket "... I suppose I won't need this anymore." He draws out the flip-phone in an almost theatrical move, holding it by its tiny antenna.

It's broken down, dented, the external display is shattered. He lays it on the table as he did with Howard's pen set two years ago. Steve, ironically so, feels the tension in his limbs loosening just a notch. The Accords and Siberia are close to reassuring, after the last events. Tony seems to think the same, given his now almost confident posture.

"My "olive branch"," Steve quietly comments.

"A bit out-of-date, to tell the truth." Tony moves his hand in the air in a condescending gesture "But still useful."

"You never used it," Steve points out as he steps forward, now standing right in front of him.

"It's the thought that counts, right?" He answers cryptically, then giving him a tense look. "C'mon, sit down: with you standing right there with your chest all puffed out I feel like you're about to smash somethin' in my face again," he bursts out, suddenly unnerved as he restlessly clenches his fist.

Steve sighs but doesn't protest. He sits in front of him with the table's corner separating them. Tony seems to relax at once, and only then does Steve realize that their previous layout recalled their fight in Siberia, moments before he rammed the shield into his reactor.

"I never meant to hurt you," he finds himself saying, almost without noticing it.

"You mean physically or metaphorically?" Tony clicks his tongue and seems taken aback by that admission, but he doesn't deny the fact.

"Both."

"You should work on putting your good words into action, then," he caustically observes, then pulling his chair away as to have more room to move. Steve is about to retort, but Tony talks first, with a weak flick of his hand to accompany his words. «The point is, it doesn't matter anymore.»

Steve just stares at him blankly, failing to understand what he means.

"You don't care?"

He shrugs, apparently in amusement, but maybe it's just resignation.

"You held back the truth and made me discover it through a 20-year-old video, then you left me to die in Siberia," he gives him a sour look " _Of course_ I care."

"You tore the Avengers apart and you tried murdering my best friend in cold blood," he replies harshly "I'd say I care _too_."

"Even now?" he inquires without a flinch.

 

_"Steve..."_

Once again, he's in front of Bucky's body crumbling away one grain at a time until it fades into nothing, blending with the murky soil. The same, crushing guilt as two days ago clutches him, knowing he wasn't even able to answer his last, feeble cry for help.

"I don't have many things to care about right now," he gives in, struggling to keep his voice firm. "Our past isn't one of them," he understands eventually.

Tony lightly nods, apparently appeased, but his eyes remain dusky.

"You're _not_ my enemy," he finally mutters, his voice trembling with suppressed anger.

It's the same anger Steve feels every time he thinks of the ashes, of who caused them and of his own weakness when he couldn't stop him.

"That's not forgiveness, Rogers," he clarifies, and his lips twist bitterly, as to signify that he can't do otherwise.

"Mine is," Steve replies, meeting his now puzzled eyes. He leaves him speechless for the first time in six years. Tony averts his gaze and starts to stiffly fidget with the sunglasses laying on the table. His face strains once more, then it relaxes like he's too drained to keep on his unblinking façade.

"I fixed your shield," he says under his breath like he's confessing a crime. Steve can't prevent his eyes from going wide in a mix of wonder and disbelief.

He wavers, then his face clouds over. "I don't need it anymore. It belongs to you, Tony."

He tells him so, even though it hurts to give that part of himself away, the very symbol of what he's accomplished, a piece of his own world. But the spiteful words Tony yelled at him in that bunker in Siberia have been reverberating in his head for two years. Sometimes they seem to echo in Howard's voice.

"It belongs to my father," his voice stumbles, it gets stuck in his throat for a split second "And he gave it to you. I get it: you don't want anything from me, but I'd like to avoid being haunted by his ghost for _this_ , and right now we need all the support we can find... even if it's an oversized vibranium pan," he explains with weary irony.

Steve struggles to contain himself, but a spark of contentment lights his chest up for the first time since the ashes. "Thank you," he simply says, realizing the relevance of that gesture and, perhaps, the hidden forgiveness it encloses.

"I'm not doing it for _you_ ," he gruffly clears up, now in obvious awkwardness for those words.

"I'll keep that in mind." Steve hints a smile, the first to surface on his lips since they started talking.

"You better." He raises an eyebrow, a faint shadow of his brassy demeanor.

They don't talk anymore. They just look silently at the grassy plain as the horizon starts fading into warm shades, reminding them that the third day since the snap is coming to an end. Steve squints a bit, blinded by the intense African sun. He glimpses Tony as he slowly stands up, leaning on the table to avoid pulling his wound. He limps towards the glass wall, then reaches for his shoulder again, holding it in an absent-minded gesture. He finally tilts his head to glance over at him.

"Yeah, everything's so beautiful and touching and cheesy..." He turns completely, pointing his thumb at the sunset behind him. "But there's gotta be better ways to bring half the universe back," he remarks, impatiently sinking his hands in his pockets and assuming his usual, cocky pose.

Steve pulls himself out of his stupor. He stares at Tony and he reads on his face that the genius is back, although in pain. He stands up as well and he straightens his shoulders as to shake the ashes off them, resuming his soldier posture. He feels emptier, yet lighter. He comes up beside him, a questioning look in his eyes. He just stares back with a knowing glance.

They've never been good at backing down.

"You got a plan?"

A faint, crooked smile curves Tony's lips.

"As always."

 

**Author's Note:**

> I translated this story myself and English isn't my first language, so if you notice any mistake just let me know and I'll be sure to fix it! This piece has been a particularly tough one and some things have gone lost in translation, but I hope you'll enjoy it all the same :)
> 
> NB: this one-shot is linked with another multi-chapter story of mine (Siberia), which I'm in the middle of translating right now. Some of Tony's reactions (particularly related to the phone and shield) refer to that story's content but having read it is not essential.
> 
> Thanks to anyone who will read, comment or give kudos to this story :)
> 
> -Light-
> 
> EDIT: It has been brought to my attention by Victoria (see comments) that the way I'd defined Drax ("slow-witted Maori") might've come as offensive/potentially racist, although it wasn't of course meant as such. "Slow-witted" referred SOLELY to Drax's inability to understand metaphors and figures of speech; the "Maori" part referred SOLELY to his tattoos, which vaguely recalled the ones of said people – to Tony's eyes, at least.  
> Tony's known for being not that concerned about how he phrases his jokes and sarcastic remarks (let's not forget his controversial "ius primae noctis" one in Age of Ultron), so I was just staying in character. And I feel the English language may play a role here in how the description sounds: in Italian, it's rather clear that Maori and slow-witted are NOT directly related and that Drax is the only link between them, so I blame the misunderstanding on my poor translation skills as well.  
> That being said, I have no intention of lacking respect to anyone, even involuntarily, so I've changed that bit with a more general expression ("metaphor-impaired wrestler"). I'm sorry if the previous one came off as offensive to some of you and I get that it can be very irritating - I'm Italian, so, yeah, I get A LOT of annoying/inaccurate/stereotyped depictions in foreign media and if I can avoid doing the same for other people, I'm more than willing to change a couple words here and there :)


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